The SitePoint Forums have moved.

You can now find them here.
This forum is now closed to new posts, but you can browse existing content.
You can find out more information about the move and how to open a new account (if necessary) here.
If you get stuck you can get support by emailing forums@sitepoint.com

If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Re: Google Index Messed UP?

Originally posted by Wbmstr84
I have a page with the <meta tag that refreshes in 0 seconds to a new url> and google take the original url and uses that as the link they put up in their index with the cache of the redirected url?

Well this does make since if you think like a spider. (If that is possible ) The address it is looking at shows a different links content. So it will cache the content it sees with the link it is accessing, not even noticing the url changed.
Technically the redirect is not a URL to the new page so it doesn't follow it.

any ideas how to fix this?

im thinking puting in a meta tag NOINDEX, FOLLOW

If you put up a noidex, follow and make sure you have a link to the new page it should work.

I'm in no way spaming the search engines.... We just had our site on an old free service provider and we bought our own domain name and thus the old site still has plenty of links to it so i have the meta tag to redirect...

If Google notices a redirect it will treat the URL that has the redirect like it has the content of the site it is redirecting to.

If you want Google to show your new site this is what you want, they will use the content of your new site in determining rank.

As far as what URL they use in their index. I've found they use the one with the most links to it. You need to get those links moved over to your new URL and Google will change it's index to use the new one.